9 Dragons

Harry?”
    “I know there is but now’s not the time to talk about it.”
    “What about me? You trust me?”
    “I called you, didn’t I?”
    “I don’t think you trust anybody, Harry. You called me because there was no one else.”
    “You know what? Just work that number and get back to me.”
    “Sure, Harry. Whatever you say.”
    Bosch closed the phone and looked at Sun.
    “He said it might take as long as an hour.”
    Sun remained impassive. He turned the key and started the car.
    “You should get food while we wait.”
    Bosch shook his head.
    “No, I can’t eat. Not with her out there and…what happened. My stomach…I couldn’t keep anything down.”
    Sun turned the car back off. They would wait there for Chu’s callback.
    The minutes went by very slowly and felt very costly. Bosch reviewed his moves going back to the moments he crouched behind the counter at Fortune Liquors and examined the body of John Li. He came to fully realize that his relentless pursuit of the killer had put others in jeopardy. His daughter. His ex-wife. A whole family in faraway Tuen Mun. The burden of guilt he would now carry would be the heaviest of his life and he was not sure he was up to it.
    For the first time he put
if
into the equation of his life.
If
he got his daughter back he would find a way to redeem himself.
If
he never saw her again, there could be no redemption.
    All things would end.
    These realizations made him physically shudder and he turned and opened the car door.
    “I’m going to take a walk.”
    He stepped out and closed the door before Sun could ask him a question. There was a path that went along the river and he started walking it. He had his head down, his mind on dark thoughts and he did not notice the people who passed him on the path or the boats that moved swiftly by him on the river.
    Eventually, Bosch realized he wasn’t helping himself or his daughter by dwelling on things he could not control. He tried to shake off the dark shroud that was coming down on him and focus on something useful. The question about the memory card from his daughter’s phone was still open and bothersome. Why had Madeline stored the cell number marked Tuen Mun on her phone?
    After grinding the question down he finally saw an answer that had escaped him earlier. Madeline had been abducted. Therefore, her phone would have been taken away from her. So it was probably her abductor, not Madeline, who had stored the number on her phone. This conclusion led to a cascade of possibilities. Peng had taken the video and sent it to Bosch. So he was in possession of the phone. He could very well have been using it rather than his own phone to complete the abduction and set up the exchange of Madeline for whatever he had bartered her for.
    He probably saved the number to the card. Either because he was using it a lot in the negotiations or because he simply wanted to leave a trail just in case something happened. And this would be why he hid the card in the salt. So somebody would find it.
    Bosch turned around to take his new conclusion back to Sun. He was a hundred yards away and could see Sun already standing outside the car, excitedly waving him back. Bosch looked down at the phone in his hand and checked the screen. He had not missed a call and there was no way Sun’s excitement could be related to his call to Chu.
    Bosch started trotting back.
    Sun dropped back into the car and closed the door. Bosch soon jumped in beside him.
    “What?”
    “Another message. A text.”
    Sun held up his phone to show Bosch the message, even though it was in Chinese.
    “What’s it say?”
    “It says, ‘What problem? Who is this?’”
    Bosch nodded. There was still a lot of deniability in the message. The sender was still feigning ignorance. He didn’t know what this was about, yet he had sent this text unbidden, and this told Bosch that they were closing in on something.
    “How do we respond?” Sun asked.
    Bosch didn’t answer. He was thinking.
    Sun’s phone started to vibrate. He looked at the screen.
    “This is a call. It’s him. The number.”
    “Don’t answer,” Bosch said quickly. “That could blow it. We can always call back. Just see if he leaves a message first.”
    The phone stopped vibrating and they waited. Bosch tried to think of the next move to make in this very delicate and deadly game. After a while, Sun shook his head.
    “No message. It would have alerted me by now.”
    “What’s your outgoing